


Perspective

by infiniteeight



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Jocelyn POV, M/M, fic is friendly to Jocelyn, the divorce may have been bitter but they both moved on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 10:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8441383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteeight/pseuds/infiniteeight
Summary: Jocelyn Darnell gets a new perspective on her ex-husband thanks to a Starfleet function and a bit of gossip.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Monthly Challenge #1 at www.imzy.com/kirk_mccoy. The prompt was: "Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar." -- Theodor Adorno.

If you’d asked her five or six years ago, Jocelyn Darnell would have told you she hoped never to see Leonard McCoy again. If you caught her in a bad moment, she might even have said that she’d be relieved if he dropped dead.

Then the _Narada_ attacked Earth. 

Jocelyn hadn’t known that Leonard was on board the ships that went to assist Vulcan. She hadn’t even known he was in _Starfleet_. She didn’t want to know; three years after a divorce so bitter that she didn’t even recognize herself when it was done, she had only just been starting to feel right, and reminding herself of the bad times was the last thing she wanted.

But Leonard’s mother, Eleanor, had called her in a near panic when Starfleet lost contact with the cadet fleet and abruptly stopped communications with the public. 

Leonard was on one of those ships, she said. Eleanor didn’t know which one. Did Jocelyn know if she was still his next of kin? Who would be contacted when they knew more?

Jocelyn didn’t know, but she kept the line open and she and Eleanor got through it together: finding out that all but one of the cadet ships had been lost, finding out that those responsible were coming to Earth, and in the end, finding out that they’d survived. Leonard included. The idea that he might have died, Jocelyn discovered, didn’t make her feel anything like relief.

She’d sent him a comm, after that. Just a text message, to let him know she was glad he was okay. It didn’t seem right to realize that she didn’t hate him anymore and not tell him so. His reply, also by text, was just as brief, but contained the same implied forgiveness.

So when the invitation came to Jocelyn’s company, inviting a representative of one of Starfleet’s research partners to attend an event featuring the senior crew of the _Enterprise_ , recently returned to Earth, she hesitated only a moment before RSVPing with her own name instead of her Vice President’s.

Despite that, Jocelyn was careful not to arrive early. She wanted to see Leonard, but she didn’t want to risk trapping both of them in awkward small talk for half an hour or more while they waited for enough people to show up that they could both reasonably claim to need to circulate.

She might have miscalculated, though, because an hour and a half into the event, she hadn’t been able to get within three people of Leonard. Mostly, she thought, that was because he and Captain Kirk had been working the room together. The Captain had on the sort of professionally warm smile that diplomats and businessmen quickly develop. Leonard’s expression was more fixedly tolerant, except when he spoke to the Captain; then the expressive man she remembered emerged.

If that hinted at how close the two men were, the gossip in the room was more than willing to paint a more complete picture. They’d met in the Academy, the gossip said. That seemed credible enough. Leonard had risked his career to get Jim on the board the _Enterprise_ during the _Narada_ incident. Jocelyn wasn’t so sure about that, but everyone seemed quite certain. Leonard had wanted a planetary posting, but he’d taken the CMO position for Kirk. Leonard had asked Kirk to marry him, and Kirk had said yes.

Jocelyn was watching the two of them from about six people away, trying to figure out how likely that last one was, when someone touched her briefly on the elbow and said, “Excuse me.” She turned and met the gaze of a man in a Starfleet medical dress uniform. He was human, skin and eyes both dark, hair cut short; there was a small smile on his lips. “If you’d like to cut through the hangers-on,” he said, nodding towards Leonard and his captain, “I can probably help.”

“Oh!” Jocelyn hesitated, suddenly torn, and then had to smile sheepishly. “I should say yes, but to be honest, I’m not certain I’m ready yet. Leonard is my ex-husband.”

“Ah,” the man said. “You must be Jocelyn then.”

“Jocelyn Darnell,” she confirmed, offering her hand. “Is it is a good thing or a bad thing that you know that?”

“Geoffrey M’Benga,” he responded. “And neither, I promise. Doctor McCoy doesn’t speak ill of you.”

Jocelyn smiled. “I’m glad to hear it, but I’ll admit that that wasn’t always the case, for either of us.” She cast a glance towards Leonard. “I suspect Captain Kirk wouldn’t--won’t--be entirely pleased to meet me.”

“Maybe not, but if you’re willing to put up with some gloating, I think it’ll go fine,” M’Benga said.

A passing waiter paused to offer them glasses of wine, and Jocelyn accepted one, suddenly finding herself in need of a little help to calm her nerves. “Gloating?” she asked once the waiter had moved on.

“Well, he did win in the end, as it were.”

Jocelyn frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning.”

“I suppose it isn’t quite public knowledge yet,” M’Benga said. “Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy got engaged to be married three days ago.”

“Ahh. I’d heard something along those lines this evening, but I wasn’t sure if it was true.” Jocelyn paused, choosing her next words carefully. “It just seems so unlikely. They’re such different people.”

M’Benga raised his eyebrows and looked over at the Captain and the Doctor himself, as if to check that they were discussing the same people. “How so?”

“Leonard wanted roots and community, at least when I knew him,” Jocelyn said. “Stability. I don’t know Captain Kirk personally, but he became captain of an exploratory vessel at the age of _twenty-five_. People say his willingness to leap without looking is one of his biggest strengths. I’d have expected him to make Leonard uncomfortable, even wary.”

“Maybe he would have been, if not for how they met,” M’Benga said thoughtfully.

Jocelyn sipped her wine, but he didn’t go on. “In the Academy, right?” 

M’Benga hummed. “On the shuttle, actually. In 2255.” Jocelyn winced, and when M’Benga continued, his tone was sympathetic. “The way Leonard tells it, he and Jim were in a similar place at the time.”

“It’s hard to imagine Captain Kirk being that much of a mess,” Jocelyn said, and then blushed at what she’d implied. She didn’t take it back, though.

But M’Benga just laughed. “To be honest, if you hadn’t known Leonard back then, would you be able to look at him and see him being that much of a mess?”

Jocelyn turned to look, sipping her wine as she tried to see Leonard with impartial eyes. He was neatly put together in his dress uniform, upright and proud. While you couldn’t say he was _enjoying_ himself, the admiration being tossed his way wasn’t making him awkward or nervous, either. He was one of Starfleet’s luminaries, and he accepted that, even if perhaps he thought it was a bit ridiculous. “I guess not,” Jocelyn admitted. “And I suppose meeting someone when you’re both in a difficult place creates a bond. But it’s a long way from a bond to falling in love.”

“Is it?” M’Benga asked, raising his eyebrows. “The connection those two have is fundamental in ways I don’t think most people manage. I think most people aren’t even sure they _want_ to manage it. The Captain and the Doctor have different perspectives, but they’re always looking towards the same place, and I think they’re both clearer on where that is for having the other.”

“And where is that?” Jocelyn asked, as much to hear M’Benga’s perspective as to know. Where Leonard ended up wasn’t, after all, any concern of hers. Not anymore.

But he just laughed. “At any given moment, I think you’d have to ask one of them,” he said, nodding at the couple in question.

Jocelyn looked back at Leonard and the Captain. At that moment, he looked away from Kirk’s current conversational partner and caught her eye. He offered her a small smile, which she returned before turning back to M’Benga. “Thank you for your insight, but I think there’s another conversation I should be having.”

M’Benga nodded. “Good luck.”

Now that Jocelyn was resolved, the crowd of people between her and Leonard seemed to melt away. She made her way easily over to him. “Leonard,” she said, then turned to Kirk and offered her hand. “Captain, I’m Jocelyn Darnell.” And then, just to cut to the chase, “I understand congratulations are in order.”

“Do you?” Jim said. He shook her hand, but simultaneously turned to Leonard, who just rolled his eyes.

“She was talking to Geoff,” Leonard said.

Kirk turned back to her, smiling this time. “Well, it’s good to meet you, Ms. Darnell.”

Jocelyn almost laughed at how carefully every one of those words was chosen. “I have to ask, who popped the question?”

“I did,” Kirk said, smugness rolling off him in waves. Leonard rolled his eyes again.

Jocelyn couldn’t help the way her eyebrows went up. “Gossip--from before I spoke to Geoffrey, actually, so you might want to brace yourself for media inquiries after this--had it the other way around.”

“Everyone thinks I’m commitment shy because I played the field before Bones and I got together,” Kirk said. 

“Everyone doesn’t know the way you latch onto the things you like and refuse to ever let them have a minute to breathe,” Leonard grumbled, though the look he shot Kirk was fond.

“Says the man who has to be dragged away from a patient or a research paper kicking and screaming,” Kirk teased. 

“My patients depend on me--and my research, thank you very much--for their lives,” Leonard said, but the corner of his mouth was twitching.

Kirk didn’t bother suppressing his smile, just grinned at Leonard. A genuine smile, not the polite thing he’d been wearing all night. “My crew and I appreciate your dedication.”

“You better, I don’t know that anyone else would put up with your harebrained schemes.”

Kirk laughed. “You might be right about that,” he said, eyes sparkling. Leonard’s smile broke free into a chuckle, and suddenly Jocelyn could see exactly what M’Benga had been talking about. Leonard, she was abruptly certain, had been instrumental in a few of those harebrained schemes. 

After all, from a slightly a different perspective, roots and stability probably looked just like connection and loyalty.

~~End~~

**Author's Note:**

> Imzy is out of beta and you no longer need an invitation to join! http://www.imzy.com/kirk_mccoy/ is doing pretty well over there--we have a live chat now, too!


End file.
